A stunning setup that loses momentum

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2003)

I find myself more than a little puzzled at all this talk that "28 Days Later" has reinvented the zombie film. I would expect, at the very least, that a reinvention would bring new elements to the formula. There's little here we haven't seen before, much of it in "Night of the Living Dead".
But let's start with the good stuff, which, appropriately, is at the beginning. The first act is a stunning piece of cinema. The sight of London completely abandoned is arguably creepier and more disturbing than anything else in the film. The cinematography employed while our hero Jim wanders empty streets searching for any sign of life is beautifully done, which is all the more amazing considering the use digital video. Once we're finally given a glimpse of the Infected, they don't disappoint. Scenes in which the Infected attack are brutal and harrowing; these are not the shambling, easily-outrun zombies of yesteryear. They are quick, sometimes stealthy, and often extremely frightening. And refreshingly, when Jim encounters survivors, they have only as much information as uninformed survivors would realistically glean from the situation. The dialogue, as much as the surroundings, gives us a properly bleak view of their chances.
Unfortunately, this promising start fails to pay off much. The second act is filled with a great deal we've seen before in this type of film. While it is done very well in places, it begins to feel more predictably mainstream as the movie wears on. The maverick feel of the first act slips away, and is eventually replaced with a familiarity I found disappointing.
**Spoilers ahead**
On the plus side, characters ask many of the questions that audiences would ask. Won't the Infected eventually starve to death? How could the infection cross oceans? Has England simply been quarantined until the plague plays itself out? These are good moments. However, the revelation that the survivors can be worse than the "undead" is something that we've seen many times before. Granted, the dialogue here is better than usual, particularly the Sergeant's speech about "people killing people", but it's still all very familiar.
However, it's the third act that thoroughly lost me. The movie has given us an everyman hero, an ordinary guy lost in a hopeless situation. Why then are we meant to believe that he is suddenly capable of becoming an unstoppable killing machine who can take on nine armed and trained military men? I understand that we've seen the awakening of his "killer instinct", and that male territoriality and mating instincts have been triggered, but isn't that also true of the soldiers? I simply found it all very difficult to swallow. This series of events also cheats the character of Selena, who was shown to be the tough, practical survivor early on, on Whom Jim relied. In the final moments, she suddenly becomes a helpless victim, relying on Jim to come and rescue her. I felt that the characters had become other people, only because the story required them to.
Finally, the much-talked-about alternate ending. It appears at the tail end of the credits, preceeded by the words "what if". Sadly, if this ending were the one originally presented, it might come as a shock, and leave the film with a final note of surprise. But with the first ending fresh in one's mind, it's almost impossible not to know exactly what the alternate ending is, effectively destroying any impact it might have had.
**End of spoilers**
In the final balance, I give "28 Days Later" a positive score based on its considerable early strengths. But the pedestrian middle and the unlikely finale do bring it down. 6 out of 10.